256 



THE POPULAR EDUCATOR. 



later than Wycherley, and writing under the more wholesome 

 influences prevalent after the Revolution of 1688, his plays, 

 at least the later ones, are by no means so grossly immoral as 

 those of his predecessor. Vanbrugh died in 1726. 



George Farquhar was born at Londonderry in 1678. He 

 became an actor ; then left the stage and served in the army ; 

 and finally returned to the stage, and became eminent as a 

 comic dramatist. His plays are chiefly distinguished by the 

 variety and truth to nature of the characters which they intro- 

 duce, and the touches of humour which constantly recur in the 

 course of them. The most popular of his pieces is " The 

 Beaux's Stratagem." Farquhar died early, in great want, in 

 1707. 



The most eminent, however, of the comic dramatists of this 

 period was William Congreve. He was born in Ir aland, though 

 of English parents, in 1670. He received his education at 

 Trinity College, and it is evident that he enjoyed a far more 

 systematic training than most of his brother dramatists. He 

 early settled in London; and his qualities being exactly such 

 as best justified him for social and literary success in the 

 period at which he lived, he very soon acquired a leading 

 position among the wits, authors, and men of fashion of the 

 day. Few men have been so uniformly successful as Congreve. 

 In his early youth his criticism was respectfully sought by 

 Dryden, then in the very zenith of his fame. In later life he 

 was honoured by Pope with the dedication to him of his Homer. 

 Among the wits Congreve was supreme ; in fashionable society 

 'he was irresistible. He was always prosperous in his circum- 

 stances, always enjoyed comfortable appointments under the 

 state, and among the comic dramatists he was the acknow- 

 ledged leader. His plots are not as carefully or skilfully 

 constructed as those of many of his contemporaries ; but his 

 characters are admirably portrayed, and if not as fresh are 

 at least as lifelike as those of any of the comic dramatists. 

 The qualities, however, in which he stands supreme are the 

 brilliancy of his dialogue, his mastery of language, and the 

 unfailing flow of his wit. The best of Congreve' s plays are 

 " The Old Bachelor " and " Love for Love." Congreve lived 

 till 1729, but he had retired from the dramatic art many years 

 before his death. In his own day Congreve was not less famous 

 as a tragic writer and as a poet than in the comic stage ; but 

 hia somewhat pompous and artificial tragic style has little 

 charm for modern readers ; and his poems, if graceful, are 

 nothing more. 



The comic dramatists of this period all show, as we have 

 seen, a very strongly marked common character, and are in 

 very close harmony with the age in which they wrote. The 

 prose literature of the same period has nothing of the kind 

 about it. It is both scanty in amount, and the several works 

 composing it are wholly isolated in character. - 



Few men of his age played a more prominent part in the 

 history of his country than Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon. 

 As a member of the House of Commons, he bore his share in 

 the contests between the king and the Commons in the Long 

 Parliament. He was at first a supporter, though a moderate 

 one, of the popular cause ; but he ultimately joined the king, 

 and after the death of Charles I. he became the faithful friend 

 and counsellor of his son, afterwards Charles II., sharing his 

 long years of exile, and undergoing with him all the trials and 

 privations of those gloomy years for the royalist party. Hyde 

 returned with his master from exile, became Lord Chancellor 

 and Earl of Clarendon, and for some years was one of the most 

 influential and probably the wisest of the king's advisers. His 

 daughter married the Duke of York, afterwards James II., and 

 he thus became father-in-law of one king, and grandfather of 

 two successive queens. But Clarendon's favour with the king 

 declined, while his unpopularity with the people increased, and, 

 being impeached, he chose to resign himself to voluntary exile, 

 and passed the remainder of his life abroad. He died in 1674. 



In the history of English literature Clarendon is entitled to 

 a high place in virtue of his " History of the Great Rebellion." 

 Histories may generally be divided into two classes. There 

 are histories written by eye-witnesses, who describe what they 

 themselves have seen and known ; these, for the most part, 

 derive their whole value from the personal knowledge of the 

 writer, and have seldom any claim to philosophical or literary 

 merit. There are histories written by men of philosophical 

 mind, of calm impartiality, judgment, and discernment, and 



with the graces of literary style. But it is one of the rarest 

 things in the history of literature to find the merits of these 

 two kinds of history combined, as they are in a very high 

 degree, in Clarendon's history. He writes of the events of hia 

 own times, events all occurring under his own eyes, and in 

 which he himself took an active part. But, though his history 

 is undoubtedly very partial, he yet writes also with much of 

 that calm judgment upon men and things, and that insight into 

 character, which belong to the philosophical historian ; and his 

 style, though not a model of English writing, is manly and 

 dignified. 



Izaak Walton was born in 1593. He passed the active years 

 of his life in the exercise of the trade of a linendraper in 

 London ; but having at a comparatively early age acquired a 

 moderate competence, he retired from business, and passed the 

 last forty years of his long life in retirement in the country, 

 enjoying the society of his many accomplished friends, his 

 books, and his fishing. He died in 1683. His works are his 

 " Lives," and his treatise on fishing, " The Complete Angler." 

 The lives which he wrote are those of Donne, the celebrated 

 satirist and Dean of St. Paul's, Sir Henry Wotton, Hooker, 

 George Herbert, and Bishop Sanderson. Few books in the 

 language are more attractive than these exquisitely written 

 biographies. "The Complete Angler" is a book unlike any 

 other ever written. It is, like its author, a quaint mixture of 

 ardent enthusiasm on the one subject of angling, with great 

 delicacy of taste, love of nature, keen observation, and a loving 

 tenderness of spirit. The style and language, in their quaint 

 simplicity, are quite in keeping with the subject. 



But of the prose writers of this age none is comparable in 

 genius to Bunyan. John Bunyan was born in 1628. He was 

 born in the very lowest rank of society, for his father was a 

 tinker, and he himself in early life followed the same trade. 

 Bunyan, therefore, enjoyed as scanty opportunities of education 

 as it is possible to imagine ; no great writer, indeed, ever owed 

 less to external aids than he did. For some years he served in 

 the army of Cromwell during the civil war ; but having re- 

 ceived strong religious convictions, he abandoned the army and 

 became a preacher, attaching himself to the sect of the Baptists. 

 He pursued his mission with that zeal and devoutness which 

 showed themselves in all he did, and became singularly powerful 

 and popular as a preacher ; but the Restoration, and the per- 

 secution of all Dissenters which followed it, interrupted his 

 career. He was thrown into Bedford gaol for the offence of 

 preaching and praying in his own way, and there spent no less 

 than twelve years. At the end of that time he was released, 

 and resumed his old calling of a preacher. He died in 1688. 

 Besides numerous tracts and other less important treatises, 

 Bunyan was the author of three remarkable works. His 

 " Grace Abounding in the Chief of Sinners " is a confession 

 or autobiography, a history of the changes in his own heart 

 and life through which he was led from the state which he 

 afterwards portrayed under the image of the City of Destruc- 

 tion to that in which we see him in his later life. As a history 

 of a great and notable character, told with perfect candour 

 and wonderful power, it is a book of supreme interest. 



But Bunyan's greatest work is the " Pilgrim's Progress." 

 Probably no book in the English language, certainly no prose 

 work, has ever had anything like the same kind and degree of 

 popularity with this. For all classes and ages, during two 

 centuries, wherever the English language is spoken, this book 

 has been found to have an irresistible charm. And it owes its 

 power not to the peculiar religious views of its author for 

 when read with care it will be found ?ery unsectarian nor to 

 the ingenuity of the allegory, though this is very great. Its 

 special power lies in the breadth, simplicity, and directness 

 of its teaching, and, above all, in the force of genius which 

 pervades every page of it, showing itself now in portraying the 

 anguish and conflict of the human heart, now in the keen 

 appreciation and sweetest description of the loveliness of 

 nature, now in passages of infinite tenderness and pathos. 

 Allegory though it be, there are few stories which, merely as 

 stories, have anything like the absorbing interest of the 

 " Pilgrim's Progress." Its stylo is perfect in its purity and 

 simplicity. 



The " Holy W T ar " is an allegory of something the same class 

 as the " Pilgrim's Progress," but is much inferior in power and 

 interest. 



